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Senators Bash ISP and Push Extensive Net Neutrality
eldavojohn writes "Remember when Verizon sued the FCC over net neutrality rules? Well, Senators Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Al Franken (D-MN) see it a bit differently and have authored a new working bill titled 'Internet Freedom, Broadband Promotion, and Consumer Protection Act of 2011 (PDF).' The bill lays out some stark clarity on what is meant by Net Neutrality by outright banning ISPs from doing many things including '(6) charge[ing] a content, application, or service provider for access to the broadband Internet access service providers' end users based on differing levels of quality of service or prioritized delivery of Internet protocol packets; (7) prioritiz[ing] among or between content, applications, and services, or among or between different types of content, applications, and services unless the end user requests to have such prioritization... (9) refus[ing] to interconnect on just and reasonable terms and conditions.' And that doesn't count for packets sent over just the internet connections but also wireless, radio, cell phone or pigeon carrier. Franken has constantly reiterated that this is the free speech issue of our time and Cantwell said, 'If we let telecom oligarchs control access to the Internet, consumers will lose. The actions that the FCC and Congress take now will set the ground rules for competition on the broadband Internet, impacting innovation, investment, and jobs for years to come. My bill returns the broadband cop back to the beat, and creates the same set of obligations regardless of how consumers get their broadband.'"
Won't someone think of the oligarchs!
Please, Al, please run!
Technoli
Speaking for the pigeons, we approve. We don't want to sniff or otherwise inspect your packets. We just want to deliver them and get our feed.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
If we let telecom oligarchs control access to the Internet, consumers will lose.
No offense intended, but could they refer to us as citizens instead of consumers? Or is this revenge for staying home last election?
About time. In before free market advocates spout about how ISP monopolies will self regulate if left alone!
Franken is one of those comedians who, with age, has gotten less and less funny and more and more nutball. Most of them are SNL alum too, which must say something about the mental toll of being on that show. Dennis Miller and Janeane Garofalo, I'm looking in your direction.
But on this and the Comcast/NBC merger, the guy is dead on. Who better to appreciate the depths of evil at NBC than a SNL alum, after all?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
of all. We need more like this!
It'll never become law, the acronym sucks.
They need an acronym that sounds EAGLE or FREEDOM or something suitably jingoistic.
Many of the democratic lawmakers like to paint ISPs as if they were villains out to screw us as much as possible. The truth is, ISPs need happy customers, or else they will lose them to other ISPs. If an ISP begins to tier their service, and the customers don't like it, they are looking to lose a lot of money. Money talks, and the best way to get your way is with money (hence why you see so many politicians get bribed). It's not always fair, but it's the way life is. We as the collective consumer should vote with our wallets. We will get a better result in the end.
I didn't think Franken sounded any better than Coleman in the last election and voted for the devil I knew.
I must say that I have been shocked to see his name so often attached to great ideas (actual NN, ending ACTA secrecy, etc.). I will definitely be sending my vote his way next time around; I think he is one of the few senators with people's rights actually guiding him.
The problem is that all telcos are waiting US decision to very soon spread those policies around the world. Will be very difficult to revert once they have control over all internet information. Besides, there is a deeper problem illustrated by two Brazilian episodes: 1) YouTube was blocked to the whole country due a decision involving a celebrity sex video (really). 2) Telcos already advertise promotions like "free social network access", not to mention dozen of lawsuits against Orkut for cloned profile, etc.
Putting all together: As soon as telcos start to dictate internet's tone, will be much easier for governments to implement restrictions without consulting people's right or even the content/service provider.
Let's hope not!!
The key is that everyone should get what they pay for. If I pay for 768kbps, then I should get at least 768kbps. If google wants to pay extra, then I'm ok with google gettting to me at 2mbps, but not with google paying my ISP so that yahoo only comes to me at 250kbps.
I should get what I pay for.
Google should get what they pay for.
Party X should not be able to pay for party Y to get less than what has been paid for.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
OMG. I cannot believe that a few members of Congress actually get it. Way to go Franken and Cantwell!!!
I guess we will see what happens.
Jesus H Christ, why is a former comedian the smartest politician we have? It's embarrassing that this guy has to come to Washington to kick some sense into them just because our elite educational institutions have been pumping out the smartest dumb fucks on the planet for years.
Tiger Blooded Bi-Winning Machine
So, does this make it illegal to give priority to VOIP packets? Wouldn't this kill VOIP?
So will this eliminate caps, and thus make my connection to an important site vulnerable to my neighbors whim to download a big binary?
I think QoS could add some amount of value, but I think it needs to be carefully.
I have an idea of how QoS might be implemented in a "fair" manner.
I Win7, I know you can assign QoS to an App or data stream. Let an ISP have 3 different priorities.
1) High priority would be a guaranteed bandwidth that a customer gets. An example of this might be I have a 2Mb up on my connection. I might only have 192Kb of "dedicated" bandwidth because ISPs over subscribes. I can assign on my machine to flag a packet to have high priority, but it is limited to 192Kb but those packets will get higher priority on the ISP's network than a packet of normal or low priority.
2) Normal priority would be the default. A simple first come first server just like on a normal dumb switched network.
3) Idle/Low priority would be that all other traffic would go ahead of this. This would allow P2P to use all idle bandwidth but not hurt the network during peak hours.
These 3 priorities would be ISP valid only. Back bone links could use priorities, but only recognize normal and Idle. This would allow for P2P to not flood internet bottlenecks during peak hours, but still allow the internet backbone to be neutral.
How this would help is ISPs/service providers could reduce costs or make free on any bandwidth that is flagged for idle. This would encourage users to actually set P2P traffic to be idle/low priority.
This would all be opt in as the OS/app would flag the packets. Assigning high priority to every stream would be discouraged by the limited bandwidth allotted to high priority traffic, but still allow the customer to enjoy low ping/jitter for VoIP/games/etc. Idle priority would be encouraged via perks like idle traffic not counting towards monthly caps/etc.
...then why do they pass laws and ordinances mandating their existence? If you don't believe me, try starting your own phone or cable company sometime.
I love it when government passes laws adding new regulations to solve problems created by government rather than just fixing their initial mistakes. The closest we got to to sanity was the AT&T breakup by the Judicial branch, but the legislative and executive branches were bought off sufficiently bought to more or less undo all of the good done there.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
Your point requires that the consumer has choice. In many areas, there is only one or (sometimes two high) speed providers. You have to have the alternate choice before you can vote with your wallet.
Atlas stands on the earth and carries the celestial sphere on his shoulders.
And a million naked nerds dance on the streets in a hedonistic frenzy of untanned, oily flesh. By holy science, politicians are FINALLY starting to learn...
We need an extension so this hits them too.It wont be long before VZW has a Unlimited Slashdot service* *This service entitles you to to read unlimited idle.slashdot.org stories. All other content from this website will be charged $0.20 per story
So you're saying that "up to" means "at least"? Do you not realize that broadband bits cost 20-40 times less than commercial bandwidth, precisely because it's shared 20-40 times? Now you want the government to change the service level of a shared circuit to that of a dedicated circuit? Any idea what this does to prices? Any idea how you'd actually achieve this, since it's impossible to build a core network that can handle all the concurrent data that the end points can throw at it?
...the new slashdot censorship icon just isn't cool. Censored guy looks like having no emotions or so.
And well, I wanna see how this process will look like in Europe.
I can't wait until ISPs can't de-prioritize or drop TCP SYN floods and can't QoS VOIP or Future-Technology-X until it passes through congress. Great... Fucking... Idea...
Or rather, manufacturing doesn't fuel jobs any more than any other job fuels jobs. What idiots usually mean when they say this is that manufacturing makes things people can hold, actual physical products, but that has nothing to with anything. People buy what they want. Whether they spend $10 on a movie ticket or a toaster or cell phone minutes, they still spend $10. Someone else gets that $10, spends it on resources used to sell the service or product that was bought.
I am soooo tired of this malarkey.
Infuriate left and right
But the US is not a free market. It's a big corporation market. It's more Adam Smith than the old Soviet Union, but only barely. I dare say that in many ways, Red China is more Adam Smith than the US, but only because they are growing so fast they don't have time to implement the bureaucracies necessary to slow it down.
Infuriate left and right
This would make perfect sense if there were multiple pipes to choose from. Step away from the soapbox and survey the infrastructure that's *actually* available.
The underlying problem is that a certain level of proritization IS network management.
You actually want to be able prioritize across different classes of services to make the most effective use of available bandwidth in cases where there may just not be enough to go around.
Bulk items such as file downloads can tolerate infinite amounts of delay and or jitter without noticably effecting service. However known delay intorlerant applications such as an RTP streams (VoIP) or UDP based realtime multiplayer games while not consume the large volumes of data that a large download of a file or netflix video would are extremely sensitive to delay.
There needs to be some formulation of what network management means in terms of proritization of services for legitimate reasons (Improvement of overall balance of quality of service for everyone)
A youtube video can tolerate large amounts of jitter and delay but a realtime video conference can not without being severly effected. Operators with limited bandwidth who are not allowed to differentiate between these classes of service will result in unecessary degregation of service for all in cases where network resources are limited.
The venn diagram including circles for network management and restriction of service differentiation needs more text to make the intent and acceptable overlap clearer.
Stop calling me a "consumer." I'm a customer, and I don't appreciate being treated like a wallet with legs.
The bill lays out some stark clarity on what is meant by Net Neutrality by outright banning ISPs from doing many things including...(7) prioritiz[ing] among or between content, applications, and services, or among or between different types of content, applications, and services unless the end user requests to have such prioritization.
Hopefully the bill will specify that's an opt-in request, not an opt-out.
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
"there-good-enough-and-smart-enough dept"
Apparently the /. editors are not. Must have spent too much time studying HTML + CSS and not enough English.
Finally, someone in an elected office who understands what net neutrality mean to us.
When the FCC starts censoring content, you'll be sorry.
WTF? How does proposing a specific law that prevents ISPs from interfering with free speech lead you to lame slippery slope fallacy assertion that the FCC will be censoring content?
We must control the internet..
This was what was done with Telcos as part of common carrier status. If it makes sense for your fucking phone, why the fuck doesn't it make sense for the Internet, which, for the most part, runs on the same goddamn networks as your fucking phone.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Personally, I am tired of the feds making rules and making laws to control more and more things. Tiered service is a reality. If it were not, then you could demand a direct point of presence just like the big boys.
If you want to fix things, provide some regulation, but we don't need any more heavy-handed "we are the government and we will tell you what to do" kind of attitudes.
I guess I am saying we need "moderate" fixes, not draconian backlashes.
Has anyone looked at what this spells:
Internet Freedom, Broadband Promotion, and Consumer Protection Act of 2011
If BP CPA. Soon, if this law is allowed to pass we'll be overrun by Certified Practicing Accountants working for British Petroleum. We're on to you...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Just like the FCC censors phonecalls, right?
Bachmann on Hardball calling for an calling for an investigation into members of Congress to determine who among them has an anti-American agenda.
That's nutty enough to pass the "nutball" mark on my meter.
They don't advertise at least x Mbps, they advertise "up to" 6 Mbps for example. I got my mom a 6 Mbps U-verse connection and found that their advertising wasn't accurate. Turned out that they gave her 7 Mbps which is generally sustainable even over a long duration. However, I don't expect 7 or 6 Mbps to be an "at least" number.
If there's sufficient demand then there's a market. If there's a market, then there's money to be made. If there's money to be made, someone will do it. Honestly, this shit isn't rocket science and the fact that you internet dweebs can't figure it out astounds me. You'd sell out private networks to government control because you don't want to use a slower competing ISP. So, you like the service, but you want to demand of the service something it does not want to provide via legislation. What sniveling tyrants you've all become. And of course, all tyrants only understand force, which is how you justify using force against ISPs to provide you with something they do not want to provide. All you are doing is going to artificially keep ISP costs higher for customers and distort the market preventing true innovation and adaptation to your needs from occurring. It's just not fast enough for the "gimme-it-now" generation.
Pathetic.
(Score:0) Yeah, mark that one down guys. Get an early start on the censoring. Practice what you preach.
I didn't read anything in the bill that said ISPs couldn't tier their pricing structure based on data caps. While perhaps not a crucial as the ISPs limiting content this artificial barrier also prohibits innovation and free enterprise. I understand the ISPs argument that it isn't fair that a few players can use up all the bandwidth but I would be more willing to go along with them if I didn't think they were just trying to screw me. Show me your infrastructure investments vs. your other expenditures and we can talk.
Someone in a political office that actually gets it? Never thought I'd see the day...
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
and its policies. a lot.
however, at times like this, i say to myself "Well, there are good people in america too after all".
i mean it.
Read radical news here
"why can so many service providers in northern Europe and southeast Asia provide an extremely consistent 100+ mbps, even at night when virtually everyone is online (say in South Korea), to every single household for anywhere from $10-$50/month?"
The actual data shows US providers more honest. US promise index was 93%. EU promise index was 84.3%.
http://www.digitalsociety.org/2010/10/ookla-data-debunks-fcc-report-us-isps-exonerated/
This legislation is good enough, it's smart enough, and doggonnit, people like it!
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
if you'll stop splitting up your comments between the title and the comment sections.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
The big question is: did someone at Cantwell's office actually use XyWrite to author the bill?
If the government is so concerned ...then why do they pass laws and ordinances mandating their existence?
Some things like the mail system are simply too important to a functioning democracy and national security to leave unregulated. We can't let "the market" just solve the problem because an important player could one day decide to not deliver the newspapers thus changing the results of an election by hiding important information from the public. Telephones are the same way and I'd argue the internet is too. What we really need to do is (as with telephone and post) require them to act as common carriers with all the same restrictions. Either that or bite the bullet and spend the money to undo the damage we did when we first subsidized the telecos building IP networks. I agree getting rid of monopolies is good, but we don't want lots of redundant network lines to every home and in every right of way. We tried that with electrical distribution and it resulted in a nightmare of constantly broken lines as companies lined up to take turns digging to fix their gear, breaking other gear in the process.
IP networks should be considered a necessary service, vital US infrastructure (as it is in many other countries). We should be funding them to stay ahead of other countries as an investment in our technological future. We just shouldn't let private companies have as much influence over the process as they do. Here's an idea, let's ban lobbying.
QoS is a great idea when you know it is being used, and why. The reason we are having this debate in politics right now is that it is being applied without consent, without being announced. When Comcast starts downgrading your service without informing you because you tried to surf a competitor's website, there are problems.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Franken also supported the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, which would allow the government to quickly shut down "infringing" domains (and force processors to block payments from US customers to "infringing" foreign websites). He probably just supports net neutrality because entertainment producers ordered him to.
... the way ISPs (and other utilities) work so that we can actually have real competition. Competition would basically fix this sort of thing, wouldn't it? Droves of people don't want X-ISP because X-ISP is throttling/sniffing/whatever traffic. Y-ISP comes in and advertises they don't do that (and in fact, they don't). Droves of people switch to Y-ISP.
Right now, though, because of the way ISPs share (or don't share) infrastructure and all that, we don't have competition; we have local monopolies. The fact that we allow local monopolies is why we now are struggling to regulate them; regulation may not be required, though, if we actually had competition. By "competition" I mean competition for the same customer using the same - more or less - technology; e.g., one person looking for cable can actually buy from multiple providers.
Maybe I misunderstand how it works right now, but it seems to me that allowing local monopolies is a bad idea and is the only reason we are having to go down the regulation route. Maybe if the infrastructure were public and paid for through $x-per-customer-served by the provider, thus allowing multiple providers access to the same infrastructure at the same cost (and that cost going to the local government, which would be maintaining/improving/whatever the infrastructure), we wouldn't have need for all this?
Broadband Internet access is a direct threat to the companies that control the traditional delivery of voice and video. These companies have spent a tremendous amount of resources to tightly control broadband access in the US in order to protect and maximize their profit from these traditional services before they are inevitably forced to change. Rolling out more access to better cheaper Internet is in direct conflict with their core business models. Through their efforts, these companies have gained local monopolies on the public resources used to deliver broadband access and fight tooth and nail against any intrusion into that monopoly all while trying to claim free market protection.
It is the government's job to regulate the use of limited public resources in order to maximize its use by the public. I would like to see them do a better job at this and it seems like Al does too.
Oh, please.
They're only doing this now because they know there's no way it's going to pass with the increased number of seats the Republicans have.
American senators won't do a damn thing that hurts their corporate bedfellows unless their reelection is on the line.
In this particular case, it's more likely that they know it will give them popular support whilst simultaneously not harming their corporate donations.
it was vendor neutral.
I think VOIP and streaming movies SHOULD get priority over bittorrent traffic as long all VOIP and streaming movie vendors are treated equally whether its youtube, netflix or comcast or my calls are made on skype or at&t.
You come from Turkey. You get extensively subsidised by the long-suffering US taxpayer (glad I'm not one). I hope Iran (or the Kurds even) accidentally nukes you ungrateful parasites one day.
Wrong, there is only a market if the big boys don't buy the local government to enforce a monopoly. That is precisely what they do. Small private company tries to compete? cant, monopoly. Small local government gets tired of shitty service and provides a utility? Can't, the cable co will buy off the state government and pass a new retroactive law that disallows internet utilities.
Some things like the mail system are simply too important to a functioning democracy and national security to leave unregulated. We can't let "the market" just solve the problem because an important player could one day decide to not deliver the newspapers thus changing the results of an election by hiding important information from the public.
So, we should nationalize newspapers? Or just embed a zampolit at each printer shop?
Anyway, this example fails, because newpapers aready refuse to print things they don't agree with, regularly.
Leave QoS settings to the customer. They can configure their router however they want - many already do this. The ISPs can do limited QoS but only in situations where the physical infrastructure requires it. And in this case, the ISPs should not inspect packets but should simply evenly distribute packets to their affected customers.
actually entertainment producers are against it because it disallows them control.
Read radical news here
Everyone knows that when you get a 768kbps residential connection you're paying for "up to" that amount. Everyone with a brain knows that services are massively oversold so that not everyone can max out their connection at once.
The issue here is that ISPs should be prevented from providing preferential service to particular content providers (including themselves).
The bill also talks about also preventing discrimination between different packet types unless the subscriber asks for it. This is actually quite interesting, as it means that my VOIP packets and my streaming video packets would get the same priority unless I authorized my ISP to prioritize the VOIP packets.
Basically it looks like the ISPs could still throttle a subscriber if they're using too much bandwidth, but wouldn't be allowed to drop specific types of packets unless the subscriber allows them.
Makes sense to me. If I want to use up all of my bandwidth with netflix, my ISP shouldn't be allowed to prevent that. (Even if they'd rather I subscribe to their TV service.)
"My bill returns the broadband cop back to the beat"
Anyone who has any legal knowledge knows that you never talk to the cops. It can only get you in trouble.
The Internet is the great thing it is today because we fought and fought and fought and fought against its regulation. Now you ignorant people (ignorant of network architecture, business, law, government and economics) want to give the Federal government the tools to destroy it (and by destroy, I don't just mean the government causing problems, but I also mean the incumbent ISPs will use the laws you write for them for their own benefit against their competitors to make the Internet a worse place). Please don't!
If you don't like your local end-user ISP franchises, please visit your local franchise board meeting next time. Talk to your local board members. Ask hard questions. But stay out of Washington, DC!
Maria Cantwell was a long-term die-hard spammer. Hearing about her doing anything related to the Internet that doesn't include actively shitting on it is sort of surreal.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
The bill as written would allow the ISP to prioritize your traffic if you opt in for that.
If you prefer not to have them do it, you can always prioritize your own outgoing traffic before it gets sent to the ISP--this generally has the effect of prioritizing incoming traffic to some extent as well.
To 'citizens', or 'the people'? It's nice to know that even when they're technically on your side, the government sees you as business does, in your role of 'consumer'. XD
Don't just stand there, get that other dog!
Because there are logistical realities preventing just any ol person from running the fiber and copper needed to run their own cable or telco. It's not switching deodorant brands. There are many externalities involved in running certain services that make competition nearly impossible feasibly with out having the Government run the intermediary system.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
It would be good for them if the internet disappeared, so a non-neutral net might help in that respect, but they would have to agree to ISPs' demands for more and more money per download/subscriber for online and TV distribution.
Because some markets are natural monopolies in which the most economically efficient outcome is in fact a monopoly.
The supply curve you were probably taught in econ 101 is upward sloping, but that's actually a not-always true simplification. For instance, the supply curve of computer software is actually downward sloping, because higher numbers of customers = a lower cost to produce the software per customer. Most supply curves are actually an upward-sloping parabola, where the economies of scale create the downward sloping part and the diseconomies of scale create the upward sloping part. Most of the time, revenue is maximized on the upward sloping portion, so that's where econ 101 concentrates.
But in some cases, you can end up with a demand curve that intersects the supply curve on the downward sloping portion. For instance, if the economies of scale mean I can supply 20 billion cell phones before I reach the bottom of the supply curve, and the average person wants 4 cell phones per year, I'm not going to be able to sell enough phones to reach that minimum. But any competitor that tried to enter the same market would experience higher costs than me, which will force him to sell at a higher price, meaning that a competitor would make things even more sub-optimal. Similar stories occur when the entire demand for a product is satisfied by 2-5 competitors, except this time there's now game theory involved in what the prices actually are.
In short, it's more complicated than just "market competition solves your problem".
I am officially gone from
well they are just buying up/merging isps with themselves. basically, 'the new to be' cable television ...
Read radical news here
Net Neutrality has so many definitions floating around that it's to confusing to bother with. Until now. Despite the fact that it's a very hard-to-read sentence, I think this is actually what a violation of net neutrality: "6) charge[ing] a content, application, or service provider for access to the broadband Internet access service providers' end users based on differing levels of quality of service or prioritized delivery of Internet protocol packets". Let's just make that illegal and forget the rest.
If you do not fully agree with Net-Neutrality, then you support the Corporate Welfare State and Net-Nepotism.
Vorizon, ATT, Comcast... are all Internet Access Providers (IAP). You pay for access. /., Yahoo, Microsoft, Sony PS, eTrade, Amazon... are all Internet Services Providers. You pay for services and/or view advertising for freebees.
WikiPedia, Google,
Corporate, religious, or special interest control of access to content, information, news media is un-American and conflicts with The USA Constitutional freedom to speak, practice a religion, obtain information on science, weapons and/or art.
If you are against Net-Neutrality, then you are against US and all folks who stand for patriotism and the American way of life.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
I love it when government passes laws adding new regulations to solve problems created by government rather than just fixing their initial mistakes.
I'm a registered Libertarian, but I'm fully behind the government passing regulations to keep an oligarchical industry from screwing up the entire economy. In my opinion, this is the government "just fixing their initial mistakes".
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
-1 Troll... too funny. you people rate down that goes against your left wing beliefs. The FCC gets to regulate the Internet, are you naive enough to think that content isn't next?
newton62 (56617) Karma: Bad
Al Franken is not a lawyer and doesn't get caught up in what the meaning if is is.
I'm in a country that suffers a lot from US policies too.. Yep, I'm in the US.
What kind of acronym is IFBPCPA? Clearly these people have no interest in getting this bill passed.
If you don't like the choices, that's too bad. Internet access isn't a constitutional right. It's a service you pay for along with your cell phone.
Free speech is about protecting citizens from the government. Internet access isn't a free speech issue unless the government is your ISP. Sysadmins running a private network at a commercial ISP can limit the traffic of any client on that network that they wish. You're just a customer paying for access to get an IP from their server. The very concept behind "net neutrality" is ridiculous.
They already censor TV, movies, radio, videogames, and other forms of media. Howard Stern was forced to move to satellite radio just to get away from the government's censorship.
Antitrust is mainly the domain of the courts to enforce, the antitrust regulations themselves are like 99% precedence, the DoJ typically tries to interpret that in a reasonable way, but usually under a conservative President the DoJ is understaffed with regards to that monitoring.
(broadcast) TV and radio, yes.
Film and video games, no.
Two things,
One, telco markets, like other utilities markets have a natural tendancy to end up in monopolies, even without regulatory barriers to entry. The more market penetration they have over a certain area, the lower their costs are.
Two, the government, like any large organization, is not of a single mind. It is made up of many individuals with many different viewpoints and agendas. Just because a bunch of corrupt or incompetent lawmakers have not only failed to properly foster competition but actually hindered it does not mean that other lawmakers are not trying to fix the problem or at least limit the consequences of these failures for us.
If the votes aren't there to break up these companies, perhaps we can at least impose Net neutrality on them.
I seriously hope you're joking that these are private networks. They get paid subsidies by the government to provide these service. They are publicly funded. If they don't want to be regulated, they can pay back all the public money and tax credits they took to build the infrastructure. Until then, they need to shutup and do the job we've been paying them to do.
AccountKiller
Free speech is about protecting citizens from the government.
In a legal sense you're right... of course corporations are government charters so free speech does apply somewhat in that regard.
Internet access isn't a free speech issue unless the government is your ISP.
So, if a single company had a monopoly on paper and telephones and that company was the only one given access to the resources needed to make paper as a result of laws passed by the government; and that company restricted free speech, the one layer of distance between the government and company would be enough so that you wouldn't consider free speech to be infringed despite your being unable to print a newsletter that says what you want?
If people's ability and individual choice of being able to say what they want is threatened, I consider it a free speech issue, even if it is not necessarily a violation of the first amendment in legal terms.
Sysadmins running a private network at a commercial ISP can limit the traffic of any client on that network that they wish. . You're just a customer paying for access to get an IP from their server.
Corporations including ISPs exist only for the good of the people. They are legal constructs of our government. Further, ISPs in particular have been given billions of taxpayer dollars to improve the internet on behalf of the people and have been granted both exclusive access to certain government owned right of ways and given exemptions to copyright law like those given to common carriers.
If as you claim ISPs have no responsibility to protect free speech, then they are completely undeserving of exemptions to copyright law and should be help criminally liable for making copies of other people's data in the process of moving it about their network. Their responsibility is the result of their special privileges and that responsibility now needs to be encoded into law since they've started to work against them best interests of the public; or they need to have their rights revoked, their corporate charters revoked and have the government reclaim all those billions in subsidies.
So, we should nationalize newspapers?
Is that what I said?
Anyway, this example fails, because newpapers aready refuse to print things they don't agree with, regularly.
As is their right, but there are a lot of newspapers and people subscribe to a variety of them. You'll note the post office, UP, and even Fedex cannot and does not refuse to transport those newspapers. It's called being a "common carrier" which grants particular privileges and restrictions. Privileges granted to current ISPs, but without the corresponding protections for the people... which is what net neutrality is trying to fix.
What Galestar has already said. If you're serious, you need to take a look at the REAL business world. I feel safe in stating that every single ISP in America has accepted tax subsidies from the government. That is to say, they've built their networks with your money, my money, everyone's money. You can't run a monopoly in this country, and expect to make all the rules without government regulation. As the article states - this is the "free speech issue" of our times. For the first time in history, the little peons and nobodies of the world can have a voice that reaches around the world. Prior to the internet, to make your voice heard 'round the world, you had to have money, fame, fortune, or a ham radio. Today, all I need is a portion of a paycheck to pay for a computer, and pay a recurring fee for internet access. Free speech. Everyone should be free to access the content that they desire, and to express themselves in whatever way they desire. Everyone - not just the people who can cough up the dough that the ISP demands for that "privilege".
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
somebody fix the print CSS ont his new thing
I cant read the bill text .pdf link, does anyone have a mirror or a copy of the text?
Tribal Identifier render your opinion on Dennis Miller worthless. Really.
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damaged by dogma
and how does u.s. subsidize turkey ffs. dont make things out of your ass.
Read radical news here
Your math works out if everyone lived in an apartment complex where your last mile costs are covered by the rent. In that situation, the "last mile" is really the last 100 meters which can be covered with CAT-5 cabling. But even when we look at your math, not a lot of people are interested in paying $389/month for broadband. The typical subscriber is willing to pay $40 and 1/3 of homes don't want broadband at all.
The cost of providing broadband for single family homes is substantially different, and it is in the last mile. AT&T and Verizon for example each have nearly 300,000 employees. When you're providing a single high speed circuit, it's substantially cheaper than providing 20-40 individual circuits to single unit homes. Each home costs about $10K to wire and you have to maintain each of those lines, and provide customer service to ~30 separate user accounts.
Right, I almost fell for it...
That f would have some merit if the pipes weren't paid for by taxpayers.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Well I can't upvote the article, but I can't say strongly enough: network neutrality is a big, big BIG issue!
Although, in practice, it's not much different than various consumer protection laws. When I buy an Internet connection from Comcast, Verizon, or a regional carrier, I'm buying a connection to the Internet. It's usually rated at an expected throughput, and I should expect that throughput barring some limitation at some other point on the Internet, but these are technical limits and not artificially imposed. (Slashdot effect, anyone?)
(WARNING: Bad Car Analogy ahead)
Not having network neutrality is somewhat like buying a car that will arbitrarily slow down on certain roads for no particular reason. I don't expect the manufacturer of the car to get a kickback from the most popular highways. And I don't expect my county or region to expect a kickback from the auto manufacturers, either.
But I expect my car to behave within its physical limitations on every road I drive. Sure, it will drive slower on a dirt road than a paved Interstate, but I don't expect it to suddenly slow down when I transition from I5 to I80 because it's (gasp!) I80, even though everything else is similar.
So, when I buy an Internet connection, they tell me what the speed of the connection is. I have about 6 Mbits right now from Comcast. That's what they sold me. 6 Mbits. I don't expect it to suddenly slow down to .75 Mbit just because I went to netflix.com in my browser! Comcast isn't giving me what they sold me. And selling somebody something and giving them something else is fraud. It's a simple consumer protection idea and it's always been there.
Network neutrality is just an extension of this simple, very basic idea.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Well done US I hope that british regulators and/or government take note.
They CAN give out 1:1 broadband, they just would then have to sell it as "always* 256KB/s" instead of "up to 3MB/s" and requiring that sort of honesty would be unfair on the poor ISPs
* except during electrical/equipment/divine intervention/etc/
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
And now pay for an OC192. Or are you an ISP with only 9 customers?
So what has he been dead wrong on? It's easy to say you like this resolution but you hate the person "because he's dead wrong elsewhere" rather than what I suspect the truth is: he's progrssive and doesn't treat the rightwing with any more respect than they deserve and shown their hypocrisy up several times which pisses you off.
Trying to enforce net neutrality at the ISP level is really stupid. Even if the law is there, someone will have to go after the ISPs.
The only way how I see it could work, is declare the Internet a censorship-free medium, and give the registrars the power and the OBLIGATION to revoke the IP range of any ISP who censors. Make it RIAA-style "three strikes": if an ISP gets accused of censorship three times, their IP range is gone; afterwards, the onus is on the ISP to prove themselves right.
Netflix will be very happy to see this bill pass. Some ISPs are already charging them for access to their last mile. I have never been Franken fan, but when he's rigth, he's right. With the oligopoly status of broadband ISPs, *some* regulation is needed.
I am used to making fun of American politicians on slashdot. WTF is this?
Well I guess a couple non-idiots made it into office, I suppose it is statistically possible. I mean aren't these people supposed to sell out or something, I thought that was their primary job?
If I was a telco i'd be pissed! "What is ma money no good for yous? You tink you bedda than everyone else huh?"
I wish them luck, though I have a premonition that they may have a rough time passing that bill (no matter how much common sense it makes).
I cannot believe you don't see the actual issue here - sure, ISP's can charge what they want, but that's not what this is about. It's about the NBC-Comcast deal, and the legitimate fear that a company like Comcast will regulate traffic, not for the sake of the children, but rather for the sake of their bottom line. The concept is that Comcast will have the ability to regulate any traffic that is in direct competition to them. Verizon does this already by denying access to content providers who directly compete with Vcast (which is why I'm very interested to see how this whole iPhone on Verizon thing shakes out).
If we don't take care of this now, then when? And if we don't regulate the bandwidth and content, and the ISPs are the ones who determine what's on their lines, where does it stop? Will they be able to regulate websites which criticize their service or business practices? What about news articles that don't paint these companies in a favorable light?
When Companies control the information, then the only information you get is what the Company decides you need to know.
Net Neutrality is about Free Speech, and the free, unfettered access to all forms of it.
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Oh, and the reason Google can scan unprotected WiFi networks and you can't use sensitive microphones to listen to me in my house is due to a legal expectation of privacy. If I have an open WiFi network, my expectation of privacy is low to non-existent. But I have a reasonable expectation of privacy in my own house.